Inaugural Gold Coast fitness boss tells of substandard facilities, resources when club entered AFL
ANDREW Weller saw Gold Coast’s problems first-hand. Expecting elite facilities at the AFL’s newest club, the Suns’ first fitness chief was stunned by the bush league standard.
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ANDREW Weller saw the problems first-hand.
As Gold Coast’s first fitness chief, Weller had the job of whipping footy’s young Ferraris into chiselled AFL stars.
But the facilities at the AFL’s newest club were bush league standard.
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The gym was a tin-shed sauna, where workout temperatures would soar to unbearable levels without air-conditioning, and inaugural senior coach Guy McKenna once broke his ankle on the back training oval because the ground was so uneven.
Horribly under-resourced, inexperienced and under-funded, the Suns had the biggest playing list in the competition with the AFL’s smallest coaching and welfare staff.
Weller couldn’t believe the state of affairs on the back oval behind Metricon Stadium in the first few years where the most talented players in the country were forced to run around on a substandard surface.
“The players were coming out of the draft and were training on a riverbank out the back that had been cut into the shape of an AFL ground,” Weller told the Herald Sun.
“The surface was rock-hard (in summer) and it was uneven and, in our first season of AFL, the drainage on our AFL training oval wasn’t up to standard because of the rain.
“It would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix.
“In our first AFL season, there were half a dozen occasions when we were forced to train on a basketball court because our ground was full of water.”
The AFL has poured in tens of millions of dollars a year to make the Suns a long-term success, but there were parts of the set-up which were a train wreck.
Former assistant coach Mark Riley said he was stunned by components of the facility, and the lack of administrative experience, when he arrived from Carlton in 2012.
“My assumption was the Gold Coast football department operated within the bowels of the sexy stadium,” Riley said.
“So when I went up there, the first thing that jumped out at me was they were operating out of sheds. Crown Hire sheds.
“They did a good job of saying a 10kg weight still weighs 10kg, but resources and environment can build spirit, self-esteem and camaraderie, particularly in a young group.
“And the lack of experienced AFL club operators also jumped out at me, because you looked at every key position at the club, and I say this with absolute respect, but they had no experience in their positions (in time) at other clubs.
“I would have thought that was pretty quintessential at a start-up club.”
No wonder the Suns failed to recruit more senior stars from rival clubs, missing out on guns such as such as James Frawley, Lance Franklin, Nick Riewoldt and Matthew Pavlich.
Over eight years, the Suns have kept going to the draft, and kept failing to play finals.
But what chance did these young players ever have?
McKenna said the players and staff were hamstrung by a lack of resources, before he was sacked with one year remaining on his contract in 2014.
“We were replenishing older blokes with younger guys all the time and just retraining and re-educating them around football,” McKenna said.
“We could never get out of that, and we were still stuck in primary school. We couldn’t get to high school.
“I always used to say we have had enough picks. We are young enough, bundle them up and get some older blokes in.”
But the senior stars never came.
The player drain at this club has left the Suns in crisis, requiring extra draft and salary cap assistance to effectively save Gold Coast.
Senior coach Stuart Dew said the Suns would have to go backwards to go forward from here, and it is hoped the new administration led by chief executive Mark Evans can save Gold Coast from the doom loop it is stuck in.
When Weller got the flick in 2012, the Suns were spending about $400,000 less than most clubs in its fitness department, and the constant staff turnover was unsettling for the players.
Unsurprisingly, Dion Prestia, Jaeger O’Meara, Charlie Dixon and now Tom Lynch, among others, are out the door.
Weller said the club did not receive the staffing and resources it was promised.
“The facility we started with in the first year was certainly sub-par,” said Weller, who is now physical performance manager at Cricket Australia.
“The most disappointing thing was subsequently what happened after that over the next few years, it didn’t really improve a hell of a lot.
“Going into that year (2012) our facilities and staffing levels were certainly not at the level that were promised, so when the team started under performing in some people’s view, I think the club made some knee-jerk reactions.
“As a broad, outcome, the players were the ones to suffer because there was just so much turnover and when that happens you lose a lot of IP and start again.”
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Originally published as Inaugural Gold Coast fitness boss tells of substandard facilities, resources when club entered AFL